I don’t want to pay less National Insurance, I’d like a better funded NHS

[CormorantStrikesBack]

🤷‍♀️

obviously I appreciate I’m in a position to think that, but I’m not on a huge wage. I’m glad if it helps people who are struggling but I’m also worried about the nhs, school funding, etc.

They don’t seem to be managing now, I can only imagine it will get worse. There are councils going bankrupt and cutting services, respite care, libraries, etc.

id rather carry on paying what I’m paying than risk such services been funded even less.

I'd rather the NHS learned how to spend/not spend money wisely. Whilst they should have already worked this out if it takes a little NI increase to 'wise them up' I've no problem with that.

Unfortunately, not many NHS workers are really 'selfless heros' after all and the wasteful 'status quo' suits them just fine.

I mentioned hypothyroidism. You mentioned "my lifelong condition" in response to my post so that's why I thought we were talking about the same thing given that hypothyroidism is a lifelong condition. I wasn't the only poster who thought this.
I have nothing more to add on this point.

I also mentioned regular ICU stays. I have nothing more to add either

Can you link where you got this from? or is it an opinion?

I was talking to a HCP yesterday, she couldn't understand how alcohol duty is being frozen, she explained about Alcohol acquired brain injury, very common, then there is now an Alcohol dependency unit in her hospital, to help people who go cold turkey whilst in hospital... all this was never dreamt off in 1947.

We need preventative health care in this country, too many people are in Hospital or are ill with things that could be prevented/limited.

I’ve had friends and family who have used NHS and private healthcare, and the private healthcare consistently wanted to propose surgery where it wasn’t really necessary…

It can if the council involved choose to take it to court. And many are.

And unless her mum’s paying market rent the local authority will still regard it as her property. It never ceases to amaze me how many people think they’re outwitting the system without doing any research and are astonished when it comes back to bite them.

Show me one case where a council has taken to court and won where a house was given away when the person was in their 40s, in good health and its 15-20 years previous

Unless she’s paying you market rent it’s still regarded as her house.

says here there is no seven/ten year rule.

Signing over house to avoid care costsThe rules governing local authority funding of care home costs are complex. But, as you would expect, they are very alert to people gifting their homes in an attempt to avoid liability.
Upon receiving an application for care funding, the local authority conducts a thorough financial assessment. If you have given away your home and they believe your action amounts to an intentional deprivation of assets, they can nevertheless take the property’s value into account even though you have transferred ownership to someone else. The same applies if you have put your property into a trust. This means you may end up paying for your care, even though you no longer have your house available to sell to fund those costs.
You should also remember that it’s not only a gift of your home that’s covered by these rules. Gifts of anyother asset can equally be deemed an intentional deprivation and their value taken into account. So, that includes savings, equities, premium bonds, art, antiques etc. Taking legal advice before giving away anysignificant asset means you will be far better placed to make an informed decision.
Have you made a Lasting Power of Attorney?
Deprivation of assets 7 year ruleIt’s commonly believed that if you gift an asset and then survive for 7 years (referred to colloquially as the deprivation of assets ‘7 year rule’), the gift is not considered an intentional deprivation of assets. However, this is a complete myth. The local authority can go as far back as they wish when considering deliberate deprivation.

https://www.blbsolicitors.co.uk/blog/can-i-give-my-house-to-my-children-to-avoid-care-home-fees/

Unless things have changed in the last 15 years. It’s what my grand parents did. My parents just paid a bill and maintained it (no big maintenance, just paint really). No rent needed to change hands.

things may have changed though.

The seven year rule is for inheritance tax.

My grand parents downsized and put the new home in their children’s name.

Not only that but

However, bear in mind that if you give the property to your child and continue living in the property, you have to pay market rent to your child if you want it to sit outside of your estate for inheritance tax purposes.

If you pay a small amount of rent or none at all then the house will remain as part of your estate, meaning your loved ones could still be hit with a hefty IHT bill when you die.

Staggering all the judgement people get for being benefits claimants /single parents etc and yet here we have people freely admitting they are cheating the system by Hundreds of thousands of pounds

There's a difference between taking advantage of legal tax avoidance and illegal tax evasion. It's perfectly legal for people to "gift" their house to their children for whatever reason they like, whether it be in the hope of avoiding inheritance tax, or avoiding care costs, or even just out of love & affection. There are specific laws put in place decades ago to facilitate the "gift" of a house to children free of tax at the point of transfer. Just as there are specific laws put in place to stop abuse. It's often a fine line between legal avoidance and illegal evasion!

Unfortunately, successive governments have actually encouraged tax planning, i.e. tax avoidance by the introduction of all kinds of tax savings schemes, such as pension contributions, ISAs, reliefs for gifts, even buying duty free booze and fags at airports, etc etc. Now that had been "baked in" to people's minds, reducing taxation is a perfectly normal thing that most people aspire to do. We've completely lost the idea of paying a fair share towards public services etc - that's down to successive governments over many decades!

Is that you, Ms Truss?

NO ! We need to cut out a complete level of middle management in the NHS...
There are far too many £100k+ (waste of space) managers.

Raise frontline staff salaries and ditch the diversity posts... Managers just make jobs for more managers....it's a self perpetuating destructive cycle.

There’s a substantially lower proportion of managers in the NHS than the private sector. If anything, it’s under managed.

https://www.nhsconfed.org/long-reads/nhs-overmanaged

The idea is that lowering a tax rate increases revenue, because it ‘stimulates’ something-or-other. But you bet when NI goes UP they’ll swear that extra revenue will go straight to the NHS.

Okay, I’ll bite. Your post shows very little understanding re the role of comms. I’m qualified at masters level. I manage the trust website, media enquiries (about 30 per week minimum), internal comms (thousands of colleagues don’t magically learn organisational info without a comms team), patient leaflets and the governance around creating those, engagement with the public and governors, design of trust documents like the annual report, staff awards (staff morale helps with retention).

Would you prefer the doctors and nurses did these jobs?

I’ll add that working in comms through the pandemic saw us working crazy hours and on call 24/7. Really quite gutting to read how my work is so easily dismissed.

I'm curious have you ever interacted with external management consultants? Do they improve organisational efficiency at all?

I totes agree, the focus should be on benefit fraud, tax avoidance and proper investment in NHS and education in a long list of things that is better than a tax cut

@briebella generally external consultants tell us what we already know if we just spoke to the band 2-5 colleagues. That said, I recently moved to my current trust and parts of the service were so process focused there was no common sense applied at all. Coming in with a fresh set of eyes meant I could hear the team’s frustrations and fix them quickly. Rather than consultants, peer feedback from neighbouring trusts might be the fresh eyes needed.

but… the nhs needs “radical innovation” and you can’t get that on zero money (yet that is the ask).